Printing presses, and in particular web-fed rotary presses, preferably having several printing groups, and further having at least one folding apparatus with at least one former, are typically used for newspaper printing. The printing presses can also have several sections, each one preferably with several printing groups. Webs of material, such as, for example, paper webs, which are imprinted in different sections, are united in the at least one folding apparatus to produce a common printed material.
The pages of the printed product can be printed in the at least one printing group of such a printing press in broadsheet production format or in tabloid production format. The printed product is subsequently delivered at an outlet of the folding apparatus which is a part of this printing press. In their final format, printed products, which have been produced in tabloid format, have a complete imprinted page, such as, for example, a page of text. The surface defined by the final format of the printed product is not folded. In contrast, the pages of a printed product formed in broadsheet format have a transverse fold extending parallel with regard to the format width, such as, for example, with regard to the imprinted lines of text, so that for a complete view of its imprinted pages the printed product printed in broadsheet format must be opened at this transverse fold. A fold is to be understood in this context to be a reshaping of the material, which fold forms a so-called fold break in the imprinted web of material.
Printing presses, which are employed for newspaper printing, form printed products, in this case newspapers in particular, in a production format that is fixed or determined by press elements, namely either in a broadsheet format or in a tabloid format. The tabloid format is smaller, with respect to the surface of the pages of the printed product, than is the broadsheet format. In regard to its surface, which is determined by its height and width, a newspaper that is printed in tabloid format is, for example, only half as large as a newspaper which is produced in broadsheet format. Printed products which are formed in tabloid format can be produced, for example, wherein the web of material, which is imprinted in at least one printing group of the printing press, is slit, preferably prior to its passage through a former of the printing press that is located downstream of the printing group in the production direction. This slitting of the web is accomplished on or at the former and extends along the web's transport direction, such as, for example by the use of a cutting arrangement. Partial webs, which are formed by the slitting of the web of material, are placed on top of each other. In the course of their further passage through the folding apparatus, the partial webs, which are lying on top of each other, are folded at least once transversely to their transport direction.
A portion of a printed product, which is combined by being bundled together, such as, for example by the provision of a transverse fold, is called an insert for this printed product. Different inserts of the printed product can relate to different segments of the printed product, wherein the individual segments can differ, for example, in their content. The individual segments can be, for example, assigned to one or to several of the parts customarily constituting a newspaper, such as politics, economy, sports, features or real estate, for example, or which differ from each other by the editorial portion and the advertising portion of a newspaper. The format of an insert is fixed by the width and by the height extending orthogonally, with regard to the latter, of its pages. The width is identified by a direction extending parallel with respect to a text imprinted on the page. In other words, the page's width is parallel to its lines of text. With printed products which are manufactured in tabloid format, one of the printed pages which is imprinted by the printing press is completely contained on the pages of its inserts, and the format of these inserts agrees with the final format of the printed product.
A need has now arisen to manufacture printed products with several inserts, and wherein the inserts, which are part of a defined printed product, are not combined by being placed inside each other. However, for printed products that are formed in tabloid format, such as, for example, as a newspaper, it is not possible at present, with the use of known folding apparatuses, to produce printed products with several inserts other than those with inserts placed therein. This is because all partial ones of the webs of a defined printed product are first assembled in the folding apparatus and are then together transversely folded. Until now, printed products in tabloid format, which consist of several inserts, are combined by the use of devices that are specially provided for this, such as, for example, in a shipping department which is located downstream of the printing press, but which is not located within the printing press.